poetry

volcán

volcán

crowned by a
misleading white mop of icy
bangs lulling you into thinking its heart
has long gone cold and the fiery veins slipped into senescence
but you can’t blot out its sleek steep black cindered sides perfectly sloped
with that extra-regular cone no other peaks take, like the first time I watched
a grey whale spout – exactly the same simple shape as a kindergartener’s drawing

for years (generations) it towers there
quietly, a presence to greet as you go about life
until one day
it can’t go on living this lie
the tension’s unbearable
rivulets of sweat stain its snow
it shakes with the knowledge of what it is
and what it will do
and then people will say
without warning
a testament to how little attention they’ve paid
and how volcanoes talk

poetry

Limbaugh

Limbaugh

O, America
how you reward
the most vile of men
and how I want
to finally quit you

all us women
battered by the words
of these irredeemable
powerful men –
we must leave

if you think
it can’t get worse, it will
it’s time to find a place
where people are calm and kind

we must up and go now
and take all our sisters
(and, yes, the moral men, too)
with us

we’ll just walk out
and leave the dishes in the sink –
leave them the mess of
guns and banks and greed –
until they’ve stolen it all from each other
and shot every living thing dead

then someday
when the coasts are finally clear
if the land calls loud enough
we may return

poetry

coronavirus: prejudice gone viral

coronavirus: prejudice gone viral

the man sits next to me
and I can’t help but notice
his Asian features
and the surgical mask
concealing his smile

I grimace hello
and he manages nice to meet you
I hear him talking to his friend across the aisle
in what might be Mandarin or Cantonese
although Korean or Japanese are equally possible
all I know is
they are words without resonance for me
with no cognates I can catch
and wring some meaning from
we settle in for ten hours
and his hacking cough makes an entrance

this is the worst-case scenario I think
(except for the mask, I suppose)
and I pass around the hand sanitizer feverishly
fear spreads like phages multiplying
and I inch my right arm away from his left –
it didn’t even start with the sickness, though,
this unbidden Chinese antipathy

at home, planning the trip,
we heard on and on
about their hunger for any creature
ground into powder
resources drained from around the globe
to fuel an empire
when I see the big tour groups
all the women sporting nondescript bobs
their leader invariably clutching a metal stick
with a grubby stuffy on the end
I give them a wide berth

at the Māori cultural program they shuffled along
ignoring the performers’ questions and directions –
because they didn’t understand!
I must actively remind myself now
feeling the slip toward stereotypes and judgement

I’m horrified by my own wave of aversion
how my lens warps
just how easy I am to fool
how quickly I can see
someone else as other